* * *
Asher walkedalong the river that ran through the mountain town and was truly blown away by the beauty that the area held. He’d never really considered himself a nature lover before, but now he saw the benefits that the great outdoors offered.
Fresh mountain air filled his lungs and the sun warmed his face. There was no pollution. No buildings blocking out the vitamin D that he was absorbing. And that wasn’t all, he’d prepared himself to tolerate the slower pace of things here, but he was actually finding that he was thriving on it. He’d slept eight hours every night he’d been there and he couldn’t remember a time in his life that he’d done that.
They’d been in town less than a week but he felt a calm and contentment that he’d never had before in his life. But it was still early days. He wondered how different things would be once it wasn’t the peak of tourist season. When the town’s population was barely five thousand. Would he still be as content?
That was a worry for another time. Or not.
Maybe what he was feeling had more to do with living with his daughter. Since Jenna had moved to Medford, a suburb of Boston, he hadn’t had his daughter for more than three weeks at a time.
Right now, he was happy with his decision. Blake had made good friends at the camp and she seemed happy. He wasn’t naïve. He’d witnessed firsthand that Blake’s mood could swing faster than a snow cone melted in hell. He knew that he could be back to being public enemy number one in the blink of an eye, but he was enjoying being in her good graces.
He’d realized that living with a teenager you couldn’t just take things day by day, you had to take things hour by hour.
When he reached the coffee shop Brewed Awakenings, he stood outside it and looked up at the sign. He still hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that the name rang a bell with him. He just couldn’t figure out why.
He pushed the door open and a bell chimed above his head.
“Well there he is, the man of the hour!” The redhead he’d met when he’d first arrived in town stood behind the counter and slow clapped as he made his way that direction. She was actually the person he was here to see.
Vivien Wells.
As he approached the counter, she threw her arms out to her side in a dramatic sweep. “On behalf of myself and the entire female population of Hope Falls, I thank you for making sure we have one less creep on the streets.”
Living in a populated area versus living in a small town had more differences than he’d ever anticipated. But one of the biggest ones was that people knew what you did on the job. In the city, he’d caught murderers, kidnappers, and violent pieces of shit and there was no fanfare. No one had a clue.
The only thing that he’d done that had garnered media attention was when he’d been undercover and saved the young woman’s life. That had made front page news, but his name hadn’t been printed.
Today he was at Brewed Awakenings because of some other news that had travelled fast.
Asher pulled his PNB out of his back pocket and flipped it open so that he could take notes. “Thank you. We met briefly at Mountain Ridge, I am Detective Ford, and you are Vivien Wells, correct?”
“Just the facts, ma’am.” Vivien’s chin dipped as she spoke in a deep voice. Her blue eyes lit with amusement as she lifted her head back up. “How Joe Friday of you. I like it.”
“I wanted to speak to you about the incident you referred to. Do you have somewhere we can talk?”
A slow grin spread on her face as she leaned forward on the counter. The position of her arms caused her ample cleavage to spill over the tight cotton V-neck that she was wearing. “Right here works for me. Unless you’d prefer somewhere more private.”
He wasn’t sure if she was deliberately trying to sound like a phone sex operator or not. Or maybe like Blake had done when she was imitating Kelly, Vivien was doing a Marilyn Monroe impression. There was a huge black and white portrait of the late actress hanging on the wall, so maybe she was a fan. The coffee shop had a very retro vibe to it. He’d noticed when he’d walked in that there were large photos of several Old Hollywood stars.
If Vivien was flirting, she was barking up the wrong tree. Asher had no interest in dating even before he’d decided to devote his entire life to Blake. He hadn’t dated since his divorce, at least not seriously. He’d hung out with a few women, and he hadn’t been a monk, but he avoided official dates. He hadn’t wanted to lead anyone on or send mixed messages.
Asher would bet money that the curvaceous woman in front of him had a trail of broken hearts in her past. She was the sort of woman that ate men alive. Thankfully, he wasn’t on the menu.
He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that there were a half dozen customers in the coffee shop and he’d rather not have them overhearing the conversation, but with the music playing through the speakers and their proximity to the front counter made him fairly certain that none of them would hear anything.
“Here is fine. I was informed that you were at JT’s Roadhouse on Monday night and you may have encountered a man who was wearing a green polo shirt and a black ball cap.”
Vivien’s entire demeanor shifted from playful to assertive. She straightened and her shoulders rolled back. “I sure as shit did. And that asshole drugged my sister.”
That was the information that he’d been told, but it was third hand, like a game of telephone. Shelby told Levi, who had called Logan, who had passed the info along to Asher in the morning debrief.
“Can you tell me exactly what happened? From the beginning. Give me as much detail as you can.”
He always advised witnesses to tell him everything they could remember. It was true that the devil was in the details, and more than one case had hinged on something that the person he was interviewing had no idea mattered.
“Well, as you know from our introduction at Mountain Ridge, my sister was stood up at the altar by her fiancé aka the ball-less wonder and I thought she needed a girl’s night out. She didn’t want to go, but she knew that if she tried to resist I would have dragged her there kicking and screaming, so she reluctantly humored me.
